


The Most Incredible Journey

by ununoriginal



Category: Kanjani8 (Band)
Genre: M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-21
Updated: 2008-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ununoriginal/pseuds/ununoriginal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Are you ready for this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Incredible Journey

Yasu has always liked trying new things.  To him, each fresh experience is a great adventure, an opportunity to savour another aspect of life and this world that he's yet to come into contact with.  It's easy for anyone watching him to see his enjoyment whenever he abandons himself to something new.  
  
Subaru thinks he might have been like that once, a long time ago.  He must have been, to have been able to have himself packed off to Tokyo for so many years, away from home and family and friends, plunging into the unfamiliar without ever looking back.  
  
But somewhere along the way, it seems like he's lost it, this ability to appreciate things new or foreign.  He's grown to not like change, preferring to seek comfort in the steady and familiar.  Better to be with the same people – work with them, sing with them, dance with them, live with them – than to strike out again on one's own.  It makes everything in this crazy spinning world so much easier to bear, the one constant in the neverending uncertainty that makes up his life.  
  
“It's like going on a trip,” Yasu tells him one evening during their songwriting session when he wonders how Yasu can throw himself into something new so readily.  “Like visiting another country--”    
  
Subaru interrupts by pointing out that he's not that keen on travel either.  
  
“Like visiting another country,” Yasu patiently continues.  “And before you go on it, you think of all sorts of things that are going to happen when you're there.  All the sights you're going to see, all the stuff you're going to taste, all the activities that you're going to do.”  Yasu gestures animatedly as he speaks, illustrating his thoughts with his hands, eyes lit up with fervour as he gets caught up in his own imagination.  
  
In spite of himself, Subaru feels himself getting pulled along.  “But what if it's somewhere you don't want to go?”  It's necessary to put up some resistance though.  
  
“Well...” Yasu pauses for a bit, resting his chin in his hand.  “Those are kind of like those school trips, or visits to relatives we had to go on when we were younger, aren't they?  You didn't have a choice about the impending departure, but Shibuyan, didn't you sometimes feel that once you were there, it wasn't all that bad?  That there was some fun to be had, after all?”  
  
Subaru grudgingly admits that yes, maybe there have been a couple of times when unexpectedly pleasant surprises left his memories of the experience all the sweeter.  
  
“And even if the trip didn't work out at all, it always made me appreciate home more, and that there's a place that I would always get to come back to.”  Yasu lifts his guitar up from where it's leaning against the side of the couch and begins strumming a few soft chords.  
  
“Weren't you ever scared, Yassan?”  Subaru's whisper is barely heard above the music.    
  
“Of course I have.”  
  
“When?”  
  
Yasu looks up at Subaru, a sort of half-smile on his face.  “The day you brought me the lyrics to 'One'.”  Unconsciously, Yasu's fingers start plucking out the tune as he continues to speak.  “It was the first time you ever did that.  Usually I'd be the one to bring you the music, or we'd be writing something together.  That time... it felt different, like you were trying to tell me something.  I was terrified.”  
  
Without knowing it, Subaru has moved towards Yasu, shifting closer across the couch until their knees are touching.  He knows the ending to Yasu's story, but he hasn't really heard Yasu tell it like this before.  
  
“I was terrified, that I got it wrong, that I wouldn't get it right.  Maybe it wasn't what you meant, or what you wanted, what you needed.”  Yasu's brow is a little scrunched up with the frown upon his face, and Subaru wants to reach out his hand and smooth out the tiny wrinkles.  “The night I played it for you, I knew things were going to change, and it was the scariest feeling in the world.”  
  
Subaru follows his instincts, and he lifts his hand up to cup Yasu's cheek.  “But you still did it.”  
  
“Yes,” Yasu's hand comes to rest on top of Subaru's, their fingers interlacing, “because it was the beginning of the most incredible journey I will ever have.”    
  
This time, Subaru lets himself get swept away by the joy in Yasu's eyes.  
  
*  
  
They're standing next to each other on the stage in the Umeda Theater, surveying the rows and rows of empty seats in front of them.  Subaru closes his eyes and imagines them filling up, the lights dimming and the cheers rising, the applause and the screams replacing the current hushed silence.  
  
Yasu steps forward, hopping off the stage.  He's midway up the aisle before turning back to Subaru, calling out across the distance.  “Shibuyan, are you ready for this?!”  The excitement colouring his voice thrums in the air.  
  
Subaru watches Yasu turning in a circle upon the steps as he tries to survey the entire venue.  Subaru thinks about all the work that's been done and not yet done, of the songs old and new that he wants to sing, of the things he wants to say, of dreams come true and those yet to come.  He thinks of journeys and first steps forward, and of the hand always holding his, gentle yet unwavering.  
  
He wraps the red towel with its black handprints tighter around his shoulders as elation courses through him.


End file.
